RANGELEY – Proposed school and municipal spending packages for the upcoming fiscal year will be presented at a public hearing Tuesday night.

The hearing will give a chance for both Town Manager Bill Lundrigan and the Board of Selectmen as well as Superintendent Kenneth Coville and the school board to share their budgets. The proposals will be voted on at the annual town meeting Thursday, June 12.

For months, Rangeley selectmen have been pulling together the budget; as late as Monday, Lundrigan said he did not have a figure as to what will be presented. He did say though, that “some areas of the budget have increased significantly” and that the proposed budget for 2003-04 will be an increase over last year’s figure of $4,770,121. Among the increases he cited are the ambulance subsidy and requests from area agencies.

Meanwhile at Rangeley Lakes Regional School, the school board has been running numbers for its proposed budget since early February and has already reworked the budget six times.

Draft six will be presented at the hearing, Coville said, adding that board members will meet again after the hearing May 13 to set its final budget, which voters will decide on in June.

Last September, the board set a goal to keep the local assessment under 7 mills for Rangeley residents. That goal, he said on Monday, has been achieved and the 7 mills paid up for education is “30 percent below the state average local tax effort for education.”

Around 85 percent of the schools roughly 230 students reside in the town of Rangeley while the other 15 percent live in surrounding plantations and contribute to the budget by paying tuition on a per-student basis. In total, tuition for the 15 percent non-Rangeley students in grades K-12 and special education is around $320,000 per annum.

The total proposed budget as of Monday was $2,097,585, an increase from last year’s figure of around $2,000,089.

Teacher salaries for general education showed a significant increase from $746,605 last year to a proposed amount of $771,605, as did health insurance costs, up from $127,810 last year to a proposed amount of $157,800.

Other increases were seen in the special education budget, which is up $8,560 to a proposed $146,370 and the principal’s office budget, up nearly $13,000 to a proposed $132,275. The transportation budget is also up over $15,000, due to increases in health insurance premiums for bus drivers, a vehicle lease and a $4,500 increase in the bill from SAD 9, which provides some transportation for Rangeley students.

Some portions of the budget are down, with the most noticeable decrease being in plant operating costs, which are proposed at $226,825 for the upcoming year, a major cut from last year’s amount of $267,346. That amount is attributed to only $6,000 being slated for renovations in the upcoming year, while last year $61,800 was budgeted.

Coville said he expects the community to be receptive to the budget because the school has an above-state-average graduation and post-secondary rate. “The actual delivery of service is well above the standard,” he said. “I think people see they are getting a value for their dollar, and so they are willing to pay.”

The joint hearing will begin at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, May 6, at the Rangeley Lakes Regional School. A regularly scheduled selectmen’s meeting will follow.

sdepoy@sunjournal.com

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